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A Detailed Cross-Examination of Yesterday and Today's Best-Selling Platform Games
Task Types Present in First Five to Ten Minutes - Optional and Mandatory This term represents what varieties of gameplay skill are required to achieve goals in the level – mandatory or otherwise. Mandatory = actions that are required to complete the level. Optional = actions that are not required to achieve progress in the game. Results show that Sonic 2 and Super Mario Brothers 3 contain the most gameplay. They both contain approximately 27 types of challenge within their first 5-10 minutes of play – and in their particular instances, that’s the very first stage. [2006 Addition: I went through these again and realised that SMB had 34 types of gameplay and NSMB had 39. /] Also the greater majority of these tasks are rewarded upon completion. Results also show that in the first few minutes of play in a game, the most popular task types are:
Followed by:
Least occurring were predictably the title unique actions. Sonic 2 and Sonic Adventure have a large number of momentum and inertia based navigational puzzles, which no other game uses. SMB3 has a range of actions specific to it’s enemy types and power-ups – like flying with the racoon suit, using the fallen shell enemies as projectiles to attack other enemies, or for breaking the bricks in the level. 2006 Addition: Same goes for NSMB with it’s Giant Mario power-up and traditional Mario staples. /] Another observation is that current generation platformers have a smaller variety of actions within their first moments, with Mario Sunshine presenting the most at 20 and Jak the least at 10. The first 5-10 minutes in Mario Sunshine and Jak and Daxter are essentially tutorial levels and a majority of Mario’s initially permitted actions are unrewarding – like climbing up trees to find nothing, breaking boxes to find nothing and navigating structures to find – you guessed – nothing. Sonic Adventure has the most exciting first moments of the next-gens - being that it contains 17 types of action and the majority of these are rewarding, as opposed to being ungifted actions.
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